Help Spread Joy to a Low-income Family This Holiday Season!

Each year PathWays PA provides residential and social services to over 6,000 low-income women, children and families in the Greater Philadelphia region. While these services provide opportunities for our clients to move along the path to self-sufficiency, the holiday season can still be a very trying time. With this in mind and the holidays just around the corner, PathWays PA is gearing up for our annual Adopt-a-Family giving program.

Adopt-a-Family is designed to help needy families by matching them with donors, both individual and corporate, who are eager to provide gifts and other living essentials to their adopted family. Matches are based on a client family’s size and the age of their children. After being paired up with a client family, a wish list is sent to the donors with the receiving family's genders, ages, clothing sizes and their holiday wishes. The donor family is free to purchase any or all of the items on the clients' list, or substitute items that they feel the client may enjoy. We also encourage the gifting of non-perishable food baskets, toiletries and other types of housewares..

Tamika Rahatt, a single mother of six and grandmother of one was thrilled to participate in the 2008 Adopt-a-Family program. Tamika, a Philadelphia resident, sought help from PathWays PA so she could get her GED; her involvement in the holiday giving program was an added bonus. “We really got a lot of nice stuff, things we needed,” says Tamika. Among the items received were a vacuum cleaner, comforters, toys for all of her children and her grandchild and a DVD player. “We can watch movies as a family now,” Tamika remarks happily.

Clients are not the only ones who benefit from the Adopt-a-Family program. Ellen Rosen, one of the many donors who participated last year, used the Adopt-a-Family program as a teambuilding exercise with her co-workers at the Bancorp Bank. “When I heard in December that charitable giving was down, I thought it would be better if we took the money we spent on holiday gifts for each other and used it instead to help a family in need,” Ellen says. “It was a fun way to give back to the community and we definitely will participate again!”

The road to self-sufficiency is difficult, but thanks to the generous contributions of local donors, the holiday season is no longer a burden for low-income moms and their families. Instead, our clients are afforded the opportunity to bask in holiday cheer and create special memories that they can share with their loved ones for years to come.

Pennsylvania and many other states require voter registration before Election Day - in Pennsylvania's case, voters must be registered one month ahead of time. So if you recently moved, just turned 18, haven't voted in a while, or never registered before, the time to sign up is now.

PathWays PA has partnered with Rock the Vote to offer voter registration through this blog! You can fill out the form below to register or to make sure that you are registered.

Please take the time to register, and also consider pledging to vote in support of your economic values at wewontwait2016.org!

From our friends at CLASPRegister now for three national audio conferences on job scheduling!
Job schedules matter in many ways. For all workers, it helps when an employer is responsive to a request for a needed schedule change. And far too many workers have volatile and potentially destabilizing schedules. If you don't know when you are supposed to be at work until the last minute, how do you arrange child care or transportation? If your total hours fluctuate from week to week, how do you budget for rent and food?
To address these issues and emerging policy opportunities, the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) is hosting and sponsoring three Job Schedules Matter audio conferences.

The conferences, which are co-sponsored by the Center for Popular Democracy and the National Women's Law Center, will include comments from U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressman George Miller on why they introduced the Schedules that Work Act. You'll also hear from workers about th…

The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) will host two public conference calls in October. Information on the calls follows below: Breakfast Matters - Effective Messaging: Getting Positive Press in your Community

Thursday October 11, 3 – 4 pm ET Click here to register.
Learn tips from a national communications firm about how to place your stories with local media and receive positive press coverage for your program.

Click here to register.
Learn how you can connect with a myriad of community partners, from parent groups to corporate volunteer programs, who can offer you and your program their time, energy, and support. Community partners can assist you with meal preparation, programming, outreach to increase your participation, and ultimately to help build up community support and in…